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Abstract and Keywords

There are more Christians in Nigeria than in other African country, a demographic situation that has produced a variety of worship styles and communities. The most socially visible is the collection of protean movements, churches, para-ministries, and organizations that scholars designate as Pentecostal-Charismatic movements. Features of these movements include: emphases on the power of the Holy Spirit to produce a new empowered person mandated to live victoriously; vibrant and emotionally charged worship styles; new desires to dominate; and the appropriation of scriptural texts to produce miracles and material well-being. More importantly, the expansion of the Nigerian Pentecostal-Charismatic formations is also driven by its embeddedness within the global neoliberal logic of profit-seeking, competition, and deregulation of the religious market. These features have enabled many of these churches and organizations to preach prosperity doctrines, exhibit wealth, and also engage in commercial practices that blur the boundary between worship organizations and commercial corporations.

Asonzeh Ukah is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town and the author of A New Paradigm of Pentecostal Power: The Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria. He is Director of the Research Institute for Christianity and Society in Africa (RICSA) at the University of Cape Town.

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